The Orphans of Glen Elder

by Margaret M. Robertson

Lilias suffered this conversation to make her uncomfortable for a few days, and then she wisely put it from her. She would not speak to Archie. She would not even seem to distrust him. And still the boy came and went at his pleasure, enjoying his rambles and his intercourse with his new friends, glad to go forth, and glad to come home again, where the sight of his face always made sunshine for his sister. And Mrs Blair still went about with outward calm, but carrying within her a heavy and anxious heart, as by the sighs and prayers of many a sleepless night, Lilias well knew.

This was the child’s one sorrow. Sometimes she longed to speak to her aunt about her cousin, and comfort her by weeping with her; but she never had courage to broach the subject. The wanderer’s name had never been mentioned between them; and Lilias had something like a feeling of guilt upon her in hearing, as she could not but hear, the midnight mourning of the stricken mother.

“And to think that this trouble has been upon her for so many years!” she thought to herself, one night, as she lay listening to her aunt’s sighs and murmured prayers. “It must be ten years at least; for I have no recollection of my cousin Hugh. And she has carried about this great grief all that time alone, and has sought comfort from no one. Oh, if I could but comfort her!” for Lilias did not know that there are some sorrows to which sympathy adds only bitterness.

Summer brought another pleasure to them all. Their Sabbath journeys over the hills to the kirk of Dunmoor were renewed; and, sitting in her father’s seat, and listening to the words of salvation from the lips of her father’s friend, Lilias grew more and more into the knowledge of “the peace of God that passeth all understanding.” Although but a child in years, early sorrow had taught her some lessons that childhood seldom learns. The heaviest of their sorrows did not press—upon them now. There was not the poverty, the ceaseless toil, the constant and sometimes vain struggle for bread. She could speak of her father and mother calmly now, and Archie was strong and well again. And so the look of patience which her face had worn when her aunt first saw it lying on Archie’s pillow in the dim attic room, was changing into a look of quiet content. Yet she was still unlike other children in many respects, though the difference was rather to be felt than seen.

Good James Muir did not speak to her as he did to the manse children or to Archie, but wisely and gravely, as he might have spoken to her aunt. Annie Graham, though a full year the elder, much to her own surprise, and to the surprise of all who knew her self-reliance, found herself deferring to the opinions of Lilias Elder. Not but that she enjoyed, as much as any of them, the simple pleasures that were within their reach; even little Jessie’s never-absent laughter was not more full of heartfelt mirth than hers.

But as they came to know Lilias better, they all felt that there was “something beyond.” Even little Jessie said “she was like one that was standing on a sure place, and was not afraid;” and so she was.

One Sabbath morning, in the kirk, Lilias was startled by the sight of familiar faces in the minister’s seat, faces associated in her mind with a bright parlour, and kind words spoken to her there. The quick smile and whisper exchanged by the two lads told her that the Gordon boys had recognised her too.

“That’s my father’s ‘bonny Lily,’” said Robert Gordon to young John Graham, who was looking gravely at the boys carrying on a whispered conference notwithstanding the reading of the psalm.

And, when the sermon was over, and Lilias, with her aunt and her brother, stood in the kirk-yard, the boys pressed eagerly forward to shake hands with her, and express their joy at seeing her again.

“They are Dr Gordon’s sons, aunt,” said Lilias, in answer to Mrs Blair’s look of surprise. “I saw them that night.” And the vivid remembrance of “that night” made her cheek grow pale.